There in Spirit – GDC 2008 – Day 2

So. Yeah. Gears of War 2. My take on it?

Inevitable.

We all knew this would come around when Mark Rein announced “Gears of War 4.” “Gears of Four?” No idea.  I will say I enjoyed the teaser trailer, especially when Marcus rammed the chainsaw into the Locust’s back. That was sweet.

However, you all know how I feel about Gears of War. It’s an awesome game hampered by terrible squad AI. Meanwhile the enemy AI is fantastic. Then there’s the story. Or, more appropriately, lack thereof. Relieve these problems and Gears of War 2 has the potential to be an awesome game. Will it be as ground-shattering as Gears 1? Eh, probably not. Then again I felt the same way about Halo 2 and look what that game did. Gears will probably end up being the 360’s Halo. Epic has an advantage, though, in that they are using the same engine this time around, and are probably reusing a lot of resources from Gears and UT3 (which ALSO reused a bunch of resources from Gears). So a November release date doesn’t seem all that insane to me. I definitely think it’s possible. Not only that, it’ll be a lot cheaper to produce than the first one.

Other stuff!

• Castle Crashers: Looks adorable and addictive. Two things that go really well together. Just look at Chuzzle.
• Online Co-Op in Fable 2? So you’re telling me I can jump in on anyone’s single player game and go co-op AND keep the stats I earn? SWEET!
• “On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness” this Summer. Praise DivX!
• Lots of Games for Wii fit. Cool. No complaints here.
• Champions Online? Oh HELLZ yes. I can’t wait to see what Cryptic does with their next superhero MMO. I’ll be trying it out the first chance I get. I had quite a bit of fun in City of Villains (was even told that my character had “the best bio ever”)  so this could be a lot of fun. Or it could be exactly the same as City of Heroes/Villains but with better graphics. We’ll see.
• XNA on Zune? I hear it’s difficult enough to program in it for the 360. Programming for the Zune sounds even more tedious.
• 360’s Red-Ringing mid-conference. Hi-larious.
• Mental Gaming. You heard me. Like remember the first episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” with The Traveler, and how he uses the power of thought to send the Enterprise to a completely different part of space where everyone’s thoughts are coming true? No, er, me neither.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 3 of “There in Spirit – GDC 2008.”

There in Spirit – GDC 2008 – Day 1

I’m not at GDC. This upsets me greatly because well… I wish I was at GDC. I think it would be sweet to throw down in some Risk or Carcasonne with the big names in the industry at breakfast. Plus, I mean, they supply the coffee. You can’t beat that.

So instead of making GDC posts this week, I have decided to create a whole new category of post entitled, “There in Spirit.” In these posts I will be sharing my thoughts on what is APPARENTLY happening at Expos like GDC, E3, E for All, etc. Why? *Shrug*

First of all, let me just say that I am EXTREMELY excited about the formation of the PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA) and have sent them an e-mail asking how I can get involved. Yay PC’s!

Next up, Audiosurf. I bought this game a few days ago and now I hear from the GDC news that it is up for some awards. It BETTER win them! Branching from that, though, is the announcement that Harmonix (Yay Boston!) is working on a game with procedurally generated content which begs a couple questions: A. Are they copying Audiosurf? or B. Did they hire the Audiosurf developers? Hopefully B. These guys KNOW how it’s done. Audiosurf is high quality awesome for only $10.

Now for some other games. American McGee’s Grimm. I give it a strong thumb up. Thumb though. Not thumbs. I shall elaborate. I love the style, I love the concept, I love episodic gameplay. I don’t like how cheesy the trailer was (minor gripe when it comes to the game itself) and I’m not sure how I feel about it being GameTap exclusive. Steam has boatloads of potential now that Valve (bless’em) is allowing anyone to put their game up on Steam. It’s like it’s begging for Grimm. Now don’t get me wrong, GameTap is cool. I just don’t see how what with the internet being as big as it is how anything can be exclusive to one medium of digital distribution. But that’s just me. Truthfully, I was really hoping to see something on American McGee’s Oz. Kind of a letdown.

I’m passing out so I’m just going to say a couple more things. Yes, I wish I was at GDC, but mostly just to see Brenda in the Game Design Challenge. Hopefully a video will be posted on YouTube or Gametrailers after it happens. If not we’ll have to make her tell us about her design when she gets back to teaching next week.

Well I think that will do. Also Darius posted a link with a very interesting Power Point presentation on MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics). Normally I don’t “read” PowerPoints in my free time, but the whole MDA thing has been kicking me in the teeth since Brenda’s test. It was good to get a few questions I had cleared up. So much thanks to Darius Kazemi for posting that link.

Sleep time for mes. Expect another “There in Spirit” very soon.

This is what happens when all you do is feature cut

Tales of Finality II

I have to say, I’ve loved Sequential Pictures ever since “Star Wars: A Lost Hope” but this might be my new favorite. They poke so much fun at game designers, programmers, and artists and they get it ALL correct. For example, this game is so simple that you use one button to do everything. And as for multiplayer:

“Ze XBox 360 has the capability of ze multiplayer and you can play with a friend, or across the world, across the galaxy. The team, we’ve been disgusting ze multiplayer for ze Tales, and we’ve decided NON!”

If glory could be in .MOV format, this is what it would look like.

Apologies

Here’s a great tidbit, kiddies: never blog drunk. As much as I stand by what I said in the last post, it may have come off as a bit harsh and has very little to do with this blog in general. So even though I won’t delete it (because I don’t usually believe in censoring myself), just know that it was meant more for me than for you… I guess. Shrug. I dunno. Walk it off if you’re pissed about it.

So I get to start work for Studio 1 already even though the class doesn’t start for another 5 weeks. When I heard I should start now my heart immediately sank into my stomach. The first word that came into my head was, “What?” But now I get to work up a whole work schedule for it. Huzzah!

Here’s another great tidbit, kiddies: tests at 8am will destroy you. I just bombed one in Brenda Brathwaite’s class. Makes me feel really good about myself.

Anger Leads to Chugging a Long Island Iced Tea

As much as I don’t want to talk about it, I really have to. So I’m going to just say this one thing:

Fuck New York Sports Fans.

I’ve tried to keep this blog clean for over a year now and I just can’t anymore. Last night’s game, and the reactions of Giants fans and/or Patriots haters was just unbelievable. Let’s take a look at the last six months, shall we?

The Patriots went 18 and 0 up to the superbowl. After the superbowl? 18 and 1. The Giants are now 11 and 6. So congratulations, Giants fans. Your mediocre team won a game.

What pisses me off the most is that EVERY SINGLE WEEK we got badmouthed. In every interview I would hear, “The Patriots aren’t so good,” or “We’d beat them 9 times out of 10.” If that’s so then how come we’ve only lost ONE GAME in the last six months? “Yeah but it’s the BIG game!” Fuck that. The BIG game was the game against Dallas many, many months ago, when we won 48 to 27. Last night we lost 17 to 14. That is NOT a big game. That is a teeeeeensy, tiny, little shit of a game. Heck, until the 4th quarter I was ready to leave the bar I was at because I was bored out of my friggin mind. Both defensive teams played great, but let’s face it. Both offensive teams played like shit. Both teams only got 2 touchdowns. The Giants just happened to get a field goal early on in the game which, normally, when the offensive teams play well, shouldn’t mean diddly squat. All it means is that the Giants managed to push just far enough to get a field goal in the first quarter. Did we let them get a touchdown that early? Nope. And that, my friends, is good defense.

My problem is with the Giants’ defense. Instead of blocking individual players, they all go to rush Tom Brady. I will point out that had the Giants’ defense decided to do their jobs and block the Patriots running-backs instead of just forcing us to Punt back to them every five minutes, they probably would have had more than a lucky win. They could have gone for an interception, but instead they just dragged the game out and forced NOTHING to happen for the entire thing.

Then there’s the Giants offense. In the course of the game, I saw Manning writhe in pain the one time we sacked him, I saw someone cry in the end zone when he didn’t catch the ball… for fuck’s sake, grow up. These are the big leagues, guys. You act like a child, you don’t deserve to wear a Superbowl ring.

Props to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, however. That was the best half-time show I’ve seen in the last seven years.

So congratulations to Mini Manning, his team, and his shit fans. Take one look at the stats and you’ll realize that your Superbowl ring is just compensation for being mediocre.

Final Thoughts on “Gears of War” for PC

So in my own mind, I beat Gears yesterday. When I say “beat” I mean I was on a train and all of a sudden a Berserker appeared out of nowhere. Mind you, I was sick of Berserker fights after the second one, and I had just taken down a Brumack ten, maybe fifteen minutes earlier. So as soon as the Berserker appeared, my first thought was, “Aren’t I done yet?!” and then I realized, “Yes, yes I am.” And I exited the game.

Now you may be thinking, “But Dan! That’s not beating the game! You’re chickening out!” Quite the contrary. If there’s one thing I hate in games, it’s recycled material. Remember Prince of Persia: Warrior Within? Remember how it really only had 2 boss battles, 3 if you decided to fight the Dahaka instead? These new chapters in Gears are kind of like that, only more irritating. I wouldn’t say they’re imbalanced; you can only go so far with 5 major kinds of enemies. However, in terms of storytelling, the pacing is awful. Nothing important happens. You go to Fenix’s house. All of a sudden, you leave Fenix’s house. Then you spend the next three hours going through that whole, “Oh we were here but now we have to go there to fix what’s wrong here” format that Gears does over and over and over again. It’s almost like an episode of “Seinfeld,” and Dom’s AI sure doesn’t help much. I actually saw him spinning around at one point. SPINNING! As in ROTATING! I actually had to shoot him to get him to stop. I really prefer being in the group of four, and whenever I hear Fenix say “Me and Dom will go this way” I want to stop playing then and there. Dom’s AI is just THAT BAD.

So basically, the plot is redundant, the bosses are recycled, and the only thing that mixed up the action was the Brumack, and despite the fact that he would have made an excellent final boss, he wasn’t. All that buildup going back to the “Mad World” trailer for nothing.

I will play to the actual end at some point in the near future, but for right now, I’m too pissed off at the game to keep going. It seriously never ends.

The Facebook Cleanse

A warning to anybody who is a “friend” of mine on Facebook.

If you send me a “My Heroes Ability” request, from this point on, I will remove you as a facebook friend. This application is nothing but spam. Garbage. A waste of valuable internets. This also goes for “Vampires” “Werewolves” and any other application that survives solely on invites. I’m finished hitting the ignore button. I get like 5 of these invites every day and I have to hit ignore on every single one. I have other ways to waste my time.

New NightRise Website

Check it!

This is actually pretty exciting since now I have a place to dump concept art, screenshots, trailers, new Causation pages, and more when I need to. Dumping them here just ends up with them getting lost in the archives. In a few months time, I guarantee that site will be FILLED with content. Old and new stuff alike. In the meantime, you can find the link up above and on the Links Page.

New Look

So yeah. That old theme? Gone. I got sick of the flowers on the side. They just didn’t fit the whole “NightRise” motif. So I’ve gone with a cleaner look. White background, slight changes to the top logo… so far I can’t see anything totally wrong with this theme. Plus it’s good to have the finalized logo up here. And damn has that logo gone through a lot of iterations. Well, at least I finally gave the final touches to the concept art on the right side of the header. Took me long enough.

Poker Smashes Me

You know I try not to make this blog personal, I really do. It just so happens that in the last week I’ve been thinking too much, and I mean WAY too much. The last post I made ended with me ranting about my first published game and how I got screwed on it. Well, today I have another story to tell you along the same lines, but this is one that goes down an entirely different road.

About a year and a half maybe two years after “Street Gang” was released, I came up with the idea for a game that combined Texas Hold’em and Tetris. Shortly afterward, my friend introduced me to a programmer at our school who was interested in getting into games. He liked the idea of the game and we began working on it together, with me on graphics and sound, him on programming.  Only a couple weeks later we had a very playable alpha. A lot of the features didn’t work perfectly (like the custom skinning), and there were still bugs that needed to be worked out, but when I had my friends and family play-test it, I couldn’t pull them away from it. My little cousin actually grabbed the table when I tried to pull his chair away from the computer after playing for about half an hour.

I’m not going to go into detail about this next part, but suffice it to say, my programmer quit and I never got the source code. Plus, nobody else was interested in programming it and at the time I did not have the time to learn Java to the extent that he had programmed the game. So I shelved it, deciding to pick it up during or after college.

Fast forward exactly four years. Voidstar Creations has announced “Poker Smash” for XBox Live Arcade, to be released soon. Now I know pretty much everyone who’s reading this is all, “You are so full of s. No way this is the same game you came up with four years ago.” Well, it is. Only problem? They did it a LOT better, and I really want to play it. It’s like someone there had read a word about it four years ago, forgot it, but then subconsciously remembered it later, solved all the problems I was having with it, and gave it HD graphics with incredible particle effects to boot. How am I supposed to feel about that? That’s like a major slap in the face.

I hate to admit it but my 2D Design professor was right: there is no such thing as creativity. I have a friend here at SCAD who came up the exact idea for “Crank” years before it was released. So seriously, take my advice. Whenever you come up with an idea, copyright it, either professionally or the “poor man’s” way (send it to yourself in a dated envelope and don’t open it). It doesn’t matter if it’s a piece of crap. Someone out there is just waiting to rip you off.